Greg | Glenfield

“I come from a family of three, and on my mum’s side you have myself who is the oldest, and I’m gay. My mum’s sister, her eldest is also gay, and also my mum’s oldest sister is trans, transgender.

So, that’s a little interesting fact about my family and myself. Everyone’s usually surprised, like every time they hear that kind of thing, very diverse my family is.

I was suppressing being gay, throughout my whole entire life, because everyone used to label me as the gay kid, or the fem kid. So, I always thought that was a bad thing. I didn’t come out until I was 21 to everyone, and they were like, oh yeah finally. It just took me a long time to really accept who I am, and what I’m all about.

It was me, I was controlling that kind of aspect of my life. My aunty who is transgender, she’s always been proud of who she was, always been out. The gay stigma, my family was never really there, so I don’t understand why I suppressed it so much. If I did come out early on, it would have been more support, a lot of support from my family, especially my mum and dad. I think it was mostly my dad I was really scared of telling, but he was the most supportive out of everything, which is really cool.

I think it was just the outside world was kind of, making me suppress it, especially my friends and the small community I lived in. So, yeah that’s probably it, I reckon it was society.

I grew up in Taranaki. That’s where my dad’s from, and that’s where my mum moved to from Hastings. We grew up on this small farm. So it was always like a farm life and all that kind of stuff.

My parents always instilled in us to be hard-working at what we do. If we want to achieve something, we can go for it, no matter what we want to do. If it’s not farming, it could be just anything that you want to do. I always take that with me, especially now that I’m in the hospo industry, and it’s taken me all over New Zealand, as well as Australia. I lived there for two years, so just the hard-working ethic that they gave me growing up, it’s what I’m pursuing with my life now, basically.

What’s really important to me is family. I really cherish my family with everything that I do, always stay connected with them. Always being proud of where I’m from, who I am, and they’re the reason why I get to grow.”